SLAIHEE – Sri Lanka Association for Improving Higher Education Effectiveness

Membership Renewal Form (This is applicable only if you have obtained membership for 2023 and want to renew it for 2024)

Membership Form for 2024 (for new members)

20th SLAIHEE Conference, 26 July 2024 – on “Giving students a voice: evidence to have facilitated student voice generation through teaching”

CLICK HERE for the Guidelines for submission of Abstract

CLICK HERE for Abstract submission self-evaluation checklist

On SLAIHEE – BACKGROUND: Training of Sri Lankan academics in teaching methodology became mandatory from 1997, after the Presidential Task Force on University Education recommended to start a “compulsory Staff Training Courses for a period of 6 months” in its 1997 Report. It was after the disturbing and violent youth uprising of 1988-89 that this Task Force was appointed to examine the causal factors for youth discontent that resulted in this insurrection and they found that the outdated university teaching methods needed to be changed if work-readiness skills in undergraduates were to be developed to meet youth aspirations for a meaningful life after graduation.

Establishing the first Staff Development Centre (SDC) at the University of Colombo in 1997, this first training course in HE teaching methodology was started so as to change and incorporate a skills-development base to HE teaching methods. After this training had taken place for a few years and with the development of skills and expectations in the new academics who were trained, they began to request for further support. Sri Lanka, however, lacked an organisation that could deliver that support to continue improving HE teaching and learning effectiveness to such hopeful higher education professionals. Since the Colombo SDC was then the only SDC in Sri Lanka and staffed with only the SDC Director, the then SDC Director facilitated to establish the Sri Lanka Association for Improving Higher Education Effectiveness (SLAIHEE), in 2005, to support HE skills improvement.

COMMUNITY: Though this SLAIHEE community was limited to academics with membership from state universities at its inception, as staff from Sri Lankan private HE institutions requested membership, membership was expanded by constitutional amendments. In 2019, a further request to broaden membership, this time from secondary-level graduate school teachers, was also incorporated into the SLAIHEE Constitution, on the basis that this category should justifiably be included as they moulded and prepared the raw material who entered universities.

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE: The Sri Lanka Association for Improving Higher Education Effectiveness (acronym: SLAIHEE) is an association of higher education professionals dedicated to improving teaching and learning effectiveness by actively supporting educational developers and leaders in higher education in Sri Lanka.

VISION STATEMENT: SLAIHEE will transform higher education in Sri Lanka to empower linked individuals to become socially effective as productive, accountable and caring citizens.

MISSION STATEMENT: Acting as a scholarly association, SLAIHEE will base its activities on proven and informed good practices, and work towards;

Preparing the products of university education so that their quality and relevance are appropriate to meet the changing needs of social accountability, socio-economic development and learning advancement of the country.
Ensuring that university staff and higher education policies would be sustainably strengthened to improve the effectiveness of higher education
Evaluating and adopting improved practices continuously in areas such as in teaching, learning, educational development and management in higher education

last edited on 2022.11.01